Ten years ago, the Western music industry was at the crest of its last big boyband boom. After a run that burned blindingly compared to the length of their run, One Direction, arguably the group that reignited the cultural hysteria of boy bands last seen in the early aughts, signed off indefinitely. Elsewhere, 5SOS, the pop punky counterpart to 1D, were reaching their charting peak, and groups that had seen some success, like The Wanted and Big Time Rush, were quietly retreating.
In the years post-One Direction, there were a few attempts to strike gold again, though despite efforts, no big Western label boyband push has since been able to master the monoculture like 1D or predecessors like *Nsync, Backstreet Boys, or Boys II Men. But while we have seemingly put a pin in boy band production, that doesn’t mean they’ve gone away. Rather than growing local, we have started outsourcing.
As we were scaling back, K-pop, which has been around since the early ’90s, has been on a steady rise. As we were saying goodbye to our last great era of Western boybands, the South Korean industry’s second generation, headed up by groups like BIG BANG and 2PM, was making way for BTS, EXO, and Seventeen. These new stars would go on to become synonymous with the idea of the ‘Hallyu Wave’ – the term coined for the global soft power success of Korean cultural exports. To this day, groups bursting at the seams with an amount of members unheard of in Western bands continue to emerge as music industry darlings. Groups like ATEEZ and NCT are making huge inroads in the US, and BTS, after mandatory military service, are due to return imminently and reclaim their throne as breakers of the internet.
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What’s interesting about K-pop’s global takeover is that it survives in complete opposition to how Western audiences like to discover their fave new artists now. TV talent shows that seek to manufacture The Next Big Thing like The X Factor (which formed One Direction) are now off the air, while others like American Idol lack true star-making results. Sure, The Voice exists, but its presence feels more like some kind of money laundering scheme at this point. Bands aren’t scouted in the back of magazines anymore, and artists aren’t pieced together like a puzzle in a stale room of a record label in the same way they were in the ’90s and 2000s. But in K-pop, the manufactured element of groups is baked into their lore. Groups are formed with intention, either by ‘survival’ shows or from a selection of trainees (people who have trained within the label in singing, dancing and performing, often since a young age).
Looking at the biggest Western artists right now, you can see a trend: authenticity. It’s not enough for our stars to make bops, we have to know them inside and out. Music is, in its nature, a personal experience, and we’ve stamped that expectation onto artists. There is great caché afforded to musicians who write their own work, especially if there’s a known story we can follow. Taylor Swift will write albums that can be dissected line by line and traced as an autobiographical timeline, and singers like Lorde and Chappell Roan have been boosted by lacing their singles with personal vulnerability.
This stark contrast raises a crucial question: why do Western audiences, who now prize authenticity above all else, enthusiastically embrace K-pop’s openly manufactured product?
In K-pop, while more and more groups like BTS, Stray Kids, and Seventeen have taken production and lyrics into their own hands, for many, the music will be pre-selected and sometimes have a distinct sonic element that ties it to the greater identity of their record label. Official fan names are decided by the label; light sticks, which fans wave to show allegiance to their fave groups, are designed with representative colors in mind; plus weekly music shows, fan calls that you can win, variety shows, behind-the-scenes videos, vlogs, bespoke communications channels like Bubble and Weverse for fans to interact with their faves and be constantly updated. If you wanted to make following a group your full-time job, it could probably be possible — and you’d be entitled to overtime on your hours!
So, why did we get the ick about manufactured groups from the West? And why doesn’t it seem to matter all that much when it comes to K-pop? The culture of the music industry between K-pop and the West is vast, and when you sign up to be a K-pop fan, you also sign up to understanding the cultural soup that your favorite artists are swimming around in.
